The Innocents: Movie Review

Cast: Rakel Lenora Flottum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim, Sam Ashraf, Ellen Dorrit Pedersen, Morten Svartveit, Kadra Yusuf, Lise Tonne

Director: Eskil Vogt

There's just something about creepy kids that the horror genre loves.

Just ask The Midwych Cuckoos, Village of the Damned or Let The Right One In.

And director Eskil Vogt certainly knows about exploiting that - and dubious childhood moral codes - for maximum effect in this atmospheric and unsettling psychological thriller about a group of kids in a high rise building.

When the fair-skinned blonde-haired 9-year-old Ida (Flottum) moves with her severely autistic sister Anna (Ramstad) to a new home, she finds she has nobody really to play with. So as her parents have to keep permanent eyes on Anna, Ida's sent down outside to go see who she can befriend.

Stumbling across Ben, a seemingly shy kid, Ida's thrilled by his skill of making objects move through the sky and soon they form a playground friendship. But Ben's a damaged boy, with more cruel edges gradually revealing themselves - and soon Ida, her sister and a third friend find their almost naive take on cruelty turning inwards and threatening to destroy them all.

There's a real sense of discomfort throughout The Innocents that Vogt plays cleverly and carefully into.

It may be a slow burning film in some ways, but Vogt's desire to eek out the narrative makes it all the more unsettling as it gradually unspools. Whether it's subtle moments like Ida deliberately pinching her sister early on to see if she reacts or Ben's disturbed view of life, there's a genuine feeling here of something inveigling its way under your skin and proving to be callously creepy.

The child actors are solid enough, balancing a careful mix of wide-eyed naivete and babyish looks to make their actions feel genuinely upsetting. (There's possibility an argument against some of the subtext here though that wrongfoots some of Vogt's story as Ben, the dark-skinned immigrant seemingly turns on the porcelain-like children in a worrying parable and campaign against outsiders.)

But The Innocents is a troubling film, one that explores the almost carefree nature of childlike cruelty. Shooting from lower down and never really getting full shots of the adults, Vogt creates a world that Ida and her friends can inhabit, an environment that builds from the ground up to ultimately disturb.

There's no denying The Innocents will leave you a bit traumatised. While eschewing some of the earsier horror edges in favour of a more subtle psychological take, Vogt has made children extremely creepy again - and avoided the pitfalls of the tropes of the genre to ensure maximum cinematic effect.